Summary
A gilded drawing-room oracle warns its porcelain inhabitant—an heiress whose laughter shimmers like crystal—against the siren summons of a celebrated brush-wielder. She crosses the threshold anyway, corseted in vanity, and perches for the limning of her likeness. Pigment still tacky, the maestro lunges; she recoils, a white swan startled into moral plumage. Spurned, he retaliates with a stroke of venom: upon her likeness he grafts the torso of a nude muse, thus forging a weapon of social assassination. Rumor detonates; her naval lieutenant, epaulettes flashing like accusations, believes the brush has exposed her secret flesh. Honor, that antique currency, demands blood; pistols at dawn splatter the atelier’s arrogance. Yet the true model—discarded paramour with kohl-ringed eyes—returns to reclaim affection, finds strangulation instead of tenderness, and buries a paper-knife between predator ribs. Mortally wounded artist collapses onto his own unholy canvas, gore mingling with vermilion oils. The soldier is shackled for the crime; only the dying girl’s bedside affidavit—inked in morphine tremor—unshackles him and restores the lovers’ fractured silhouette against a sunrise that tastes of absolution and turpentine.
Synopsis
The first of a series of pictures entitled "The Morals of Men." Against the advice of her fiancé a social favorite permits a famous artist to paint her portrait. When the sitting is over the artist attempts to embrace her. She repulses him, and angered, he conceives the idea of painting the undraped figure to the portrait. By showing his picture the girl's reputation will be blasted and his work of revenge complete. The visits of the girl to the artist's studio cause a separation between her and the young lieutenant, so when the painting is put on exhibition by the artist he believes his sweetheart has been the model. He is, however, enraged at the liberty the artist has taken and challenges the painter to a duel. The latter is wounded. The model who has posed for the figure had been cast aside by the artist, and on the day of the duel she calls at the studio to plead with the artist to take her back. A heated argument follows, the artist attempts to strangle the girl, and in defense she kills him. The lieutenant is arrested on suspicion for the murder because of his duel with the artist. Overcome with the torture of the guilty the model attempts to end her life. When she recovers consciousness and realizes that her end is near she confesses that she posed for the figure and that she had killed the artist in self-defense. The confession frees the lieutenant and brings about a reconciliation between the estranged lovers.
